Endorsing the Right Leader – Part 9: Endorse the Right Leader (continued…)

Here’s the bottom line. First we need to decide whether the dark clouds are real. Is the forecast for tomorrow good or bad? Maybe it’s still picnic time! Or are we living in a portentous day?

If the times are ominous, whose leadership will we endorse? Whose petition will we sign our name to? Who will get our approval and commitment? When none of our human leaders seem to be adequate for the tasks at hand, do we say that’s how we feel about Jesus too?

My conviction is that this is a time to live decidedly Christian, to be unashamedly Christian, to feel enthusiastically Christian. We must forget about whether others think we’re nice people and instead be concerned only that they know we place our total confidence in Christ—in who He is and in everything He says. Let’s listen to the voice in our conscience, the Holy Spirit, that says, “I’m ready now to use the resources entrusted to you. This is the time you’re to respond.”

“Yes,” we reply. “We’re ready to follow You, Jesus, even to places we wouldn’t normally go on our own.”

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Endorsing the Right Leader – Part 8: Endorse the Right Leader (continued…)

On a true-false quiz, believers would easily answer the following questions correctly.

True or false: It is in your best interest to pick and choose which teachings of Christ you want to obey.

You know that’s false.

Here’s another. True or false: It is wise to live in accordance with all that Jesus taught.

That’s another easy one. It’s obviously true.

We can answer the questions, but it’s another thing to pull our lives in line with those directives and not just say, “I’m a Christian,” but actually follow hard after Christ.

Like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, we’re pretty well convinced that Jesus is who He claimed to be, the unique Son of God, but we have a hard time letting that truth impact our lives the way it should.

That’s why we struggle with disciplines like downscaling.

That’s why we let stress get to us rather than off-loading it onto Christ.

That’s why we copy our society and remain individualistic, resisting helpful ideas like combining resources.

That’s why we fight for our own rights, barely listening to the other person’s position, much less the pain behind it.

That’s why our sense of dignity is often more related to what people think about us than to what God thinks.

That’s why we sometimes forget we’re not infinite as God is, so we don’t set proper limits on what we can do.

That’s why we don’t like to identify with the suffering of Christ.

Oh, we make excuses for our actions. We’re like Pinocchio when the Blue Fairy asked why he was locked in the cage. “Oh, it wasn’t my fault,” he replied, “A giant monster with bulging eyes kidnapped me!”

“And what about school?”

“School? Ah, well, that was lots of fun.”

With each lie, Pinocchio’s nose grew longer, until it stretched right through the bars of the cage.

“Now you see, Finocchio,” the Blue Fairy explained, “a lie grows and grows until it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

Most Christians haven’t yet come to this understanding. We still live under the illusion that all is relatively well, that the church really isn’t backslidden! Though our nose is seen as disproportionately long by outsiders, within the church we’ve gotten rather used to its length.

“A few changes here or there,” we think, “and we’ll be all right. The problem will just take a couple of minor adjustments.”

I believe otherwise. Even the simple alterations suggested in this book seem radical to many.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Endorsing the Right Leader – Part 7: Endorse the Right Leader (continued…)

In our society a lot of individuals have been tripped up lately, not only by the desire for money or the applause of their peers, but also by supposed religious leaders. I guess that was inevitable. Sooner or later in a secular culture, where the supernatural is viewed more or less as irrelevant, people begin to long for something beyond themselves, outside the realm of mere humanity. And of course not everything that’s passed off today as spiritual is worth following.

On the positive side, Jesus is a personality to whom many are flocking. Outside North America He is drawing a huge following. In fact, this openness to the Lord is unprecedented in the history of the world.

Many of us have been hoping that in North America there will also be a new sense of receptivity toward Christ. We pray continually for revival in the churches throughout the states and provinces.

Revival always begins among Christians. It’s marked by a new commitment to Jesus and His teachings. Christians know they should follow Christ closely, yet sometimes it seems so hard to do what we know would be to our benefit.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy

Endorsing the Right Leader – Part 5: Endorse the Right Leader

Because the future is unpredictable, it’s especially important to endorse the right leader. That’s a survival skill. Follow the wrong person and who knows where he or she will lead you, especially in a time like the present.

Recently I was searching for a good word to describe our times. What I came up with was portentous. A portent is like having a massive dark cloud appearing before a storm. In portentous times we feel uneasy because we don’t know whether we’re ready for what’s coming. A portentous day is the opposite of a sunshiny, let’s-go-on-a-picnic kind of day.

That’s how I see our world. Its changes and churnings are coming closer daily to where we live. Events are happening so fast it’s hard to adjust to them all. It’s too much, too fast. That’s why the topic of survival skills is so timely.

Too many issues beyond our sphere of influence impact our lives. For example, we don’t personally control the ozone layer or the earth’s deforestation rate or the proliferation of nations possessing nuclear weapons. These and numerous other concerns are someone else’s responsibility. Most of us are not world leaders.

A leader is someone others will follow to a place they wouldn’t go on their own. If for some reason people refuse to follow a given individual, he or she is no longer a leader. In a portentous day it’s important to decide whether the leaders we’re following are worthy of our trust.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy